


On a Good Day

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Clint Barton, BDSM things, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Danger Kink, Kink, M/M, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:44:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21806065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: On a good day, Clint Barton can kick ass and take names and not have any nightmares.It's been a while since he's had a good day.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 104
Kudos: 440
Collections: Charity Hawktion 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/gifts).



> as always, all the thanks to Ro for beta reading and supporting and being freaking amazing.
> 
> This is a gift for Arson, who is amazing and so so so generous and awesome.

None of it was Clint’s fault.

Which, all told, was a fairly unique position to find himself in. Usually, it was  _ all _ Clint’s fault.

But this time?

Nope.

Sure, the plan had been his, but it had been ‘vetted’ because - well, Clint could think of a hell of a lot of reasons for why people would feel the need to vet his plans, his ideas, his everything.

The point was that it  _ had _ been vetted, and it had been a solid plan from the get-go.

It was just another of their post ‘everything we believed turns out to be a lie and we’re all fucked’ slash and gather and burn missions. The ones that The Avengers - sans Thor, but plus Sam Wilson - had been running ever since- Well, ever since everything they believed turned out to be a lie and they realized they were all fucked. Or, well, ever since Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier.

The missions, the over-all gameplan, Clint supposed, was more about uprooting and destroying HYDRA than anything else - at least for Tony and Natasha and Bruce. But for Steve, and by unspoken but fierce extension, Sam, they were about finding out what the fuck had happened to Bucky Barnes to turn him into the Winter Soldier, and also  _ finding _ Bucky Barnes and saving him. Or something like that.

For Clint… for Clint, it was a bit more complicated.

Because Clint didn’t really believe it was possible to destroy HYDRA, not now, not after all the shit Natasha had put on the net and… literally  _ all _ of the shit, and there was so fucking much of it. 

But, well, it wasn’t like Clint was doing all that much these days. After three months of enforced leave post the Battle of New York/Loki Mindfuckery, Clint had spent another four months riding a desk in DC, and then had his ass shipped off on a long-term op in Afghanistan. Which is where he’d been when all of the shit hit the fan, and it had been… a hell of a time working his way back to New York with all of his aliases blown and governments all over the world out for him and, well,  _ HYDRA. _

He’d done it, because moving forward was better than stopping, and he’d joined the ‘fuck HYDRA’ team and… and he’d gone where he was pointed and done what he was told, and sometimes, sometimes he could even forget there was more to him than that.

And then sometimes, he opened his fat mouth and pointed out that he was the only one on the team fluent in Bulgarian and he’d actually  _ been _ to Sophia, and blowing up one little HYDRA base in an office building was something he could handle on his own.

So, okay, maybe it was partially his fault after all.

Clint had gone in late on a Sunday, his recon showing that the fewest number of civilians would be in the office building where the HYDRA secret base was located then. It was a little bizarre, to think of a secret Nazi organization  _ renting _ office space. But, well, HYDRA’s thing was apparently hiding in plain sight. So. 

So Clint went in, ready for a full-scale incursion, even if that wasn’t what he was likely to face and-

And walked into a warzone.

Or at least the aftermath of one.

HYDRA rented the second floor of the building, and the moment Clint stepped out of the stairwell, it was apparent that he was late to the party.

For one, the lights were on. Ish. Several were flickering weakly, fluorescents humming at a pitch his StarkTech hearing aids picked up and somehow magnified.

For another, the place was trashed. Desks overturned. Computer monitors thrown to the ground.

Then there were the bodies.

The ones laying on the floor or slumped against the walls.

Bullet holes arranged neatly in the center mass or in clean headshots.

There wasn’t even that much blood, but it  _ smelled _ like death. Blood and shit and fear.

Clint had to fight the urge to turn around and walk back down the stairs - run back down the stairs. Because, Clint reminded himself, he wasn’t afraid. Or, well, he was maybe afraid of a hell of a lot - but it didn’t matter. Because he had a job to do.

So he sucked it up, put away his bow and instead gripped his gun - a Serbian Zastava PPZ - a little tighter, and went to work.

‘Work’ was apparently - today, at least- going to be making sure the sixteen corpses he found were actually corpses - they were - and that the smashed computers were impossible to retrieve info from - they were. And-

And getting slammed against the wall, wickedly sharp blade of a matte black Gerber against his throat.

The knife was, of course, held by the Winter Soldier.

Or Bucky Barnes.

Or- 

Actually, Clint was more than a little confused.

Because the guy holding Clint in place with what looked like  _ no _ effort on his part didn’t look at all like the Winter Soldier  _ or _ Bucky Barnes.

Except that he had the metal arm, which Natasha and Steve and Sam had all described in great detail. And he had the glacial eyes and stupidly sharp cheek and jawbones that Clint had looked at in books for forever.

The rest of him, however, was  _ not the same _ .

His shoulder-length hair was pulled into a slick tail at the back of his neck, and his face was freshly shaved, smooth as sin, and he was dressed like an accountant. Or a golfer.

Pressed khakis - with an actual crease in the center of them - and a pink button-up shirt and a tie, and a fucking  _ sweater vest _ . He didn’t even look wrinkled. Didn’t even have any blood spatters on him. 

Disconcerting didn’t even begin to cover it.

Especially not with his eyes boring into Clint’s, as if he could  _ glare _ him into submission. Hell, maybe he could.

“Have a good golf game?” Clint asked, feeling the press of the blade against his windpipe as he spoke.

Barnes continued to glare, but a slight furrow developed between his dark brows.

“Clinton Francis Barton.” His words, his voice, weren’t quite the empty monotone the Trouble Trio (and Clint had started calling Steve, Natasha and Sam that to their faces because he really didn’t have any self-preservation) had described. Maybe they had exaggerated. Or maybe Barnes was… less the murder robot Natasha had said he had been.

“James Buchanan Barnes. You know, I haven’t been full-named since my mom died? Well - there was this one guy in Albuquerque who full-named me in bed, when I was going down on him. I’ve been told my blowjobs are kind of a religious experience, so that’s fair. Is that what you’re after here? Because, sure, you’re hot as hell but-”

Barnes switched out the knife for his left hand and wrapped it around Clint’s neck, metal fingers digging in, immediately constricting his airflow.

“I love breathplay,” Clint managed to choke out. “But - you didn’t even ask for my safeword, baby. You haven’t even bought me dinner or- or-”

Talking became impossible. Barnes’s gaze remained implacable, even with black and red edging into Clint’s vision.

“Fuck. You,” Clint managed to gasp.

And then the world went dark.

-o-

He woke up on a bed, in a dark room with a single window, covered by a blackout curtain. His hands were tied to opposite ends of the headboard, the rope just slack enough for him to relax his hands but not enough for him to reach  _ anything _ . Even with his feet free.

Clint closed his eyes, made himself take a few deep breaths, and then started to scream.

Less than a minute later, Barnes was in the room.

He made no effort to shut Clint up, though. In fact, he leaned against the open doorway, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at Clint with a single arched eyebrow.

_ That _ wasn’t a murder robot expression.

He had also changed out of his golf-accountant chic and into a black t-shirt and black jeans. His hair was still tied back, his jaw still stupidly smooth, but the clothes went a long way to making him look more like…

Hell. Clint didn’t actually know.

He stopped screaming. If Barnes wasn’t making an effort to stop him, it meant there was no one close by.

“Room service here sucks,” Clint said.

A complicated expression crossed Barnes’s face, but he didn’t otherwise move.

Clint yanked on the ropes holding him to the bed frame.

“Seriously, you gotta ask for a safeword, buddy.”

Barnes didn’t react.

Clint sighed.

This was one of the first things they had drilled into him, during his condensed and awful S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical training, after he joined the ‘good guys.’  _ If you get captured, make them talk. Keep them talking _ . And sure, Barnes wasn’t doing any talking - it was all Clint monologuing at this point - but maybe he’d talk long enough for the Avengers to realize he had missed his check-in and send someone after him. Or some other kind of fairy-tale rescue.

“Winnebago,” Clint said. “My safeword.” It occurred to him that, while  _ he _ was just trying to rile Barnes up, there was a chance - a really good one, actually - that Barnes had no fucking clue what he was talking about. “A safeword is what I say when you do shit too freaky for me, okay? Key component to the safe, sane, consensual-”

“I know what a safeword is.” Barnes sounded bored.

“Uh.” Clint took a moment to readjust his worldview. It was a little radical. “So, you, what, spent the last ten months HYDRA-free watching porn?”

Barnes’s expression didn’t change. 

“Cool. I mean. Good for you. Stick it to the man. Or the woman. You know, metaphorically - and I guess, literally, huh?”

Barnes stepped into the room, crossing the space between the doorway and the bed in five easy strides. He stopped by the foot of the bed. Close enough for Clint to kick him.

So Clint did.

Barnes caught his heel and held him.

Clint realized, a little late, that his boots were gone. It seemed like a weirdly thoughtful thing for Barnes to do, and it made Clint frown.

Barnes circled his fingers around Clint’s ankle, grip tight, and Clint sucked in a shaky breath.

“I could kill you,” Barnes said.

“Yep,” Clint agreed. No point in arguing that one.

“You’re aroused.”

Clint swallowed hard. Well, fuck. 

He closed his eyes.

“Yep,” he repeated, hating himself  _ just _ a little more. Not that it mattered - he hated himself enough already that just a bit more wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

Barnes’s fingers tightened, nails digging into Clint’s flesh in a bright flash of pain that had Clint snapping his eyes open. He just barely refrained from making an embarrassing sound.

Barnes’s eyes bore into Clint’s, unblinking. And for all that Clint had  _ no idea _ what Barnes was thinking, it was just as obvious to him that Barnes was not a murder robot. He was clearly thinking  _ something _ , Clint just had no fucking clue what.

Barnes relaxed his grip, but didn’t let Clint go.

“Tell Steve I’m alive. And to stop looking for me.”

Clint snorted. He had to.

“You know he’s not going to stop.”

Barnes arched an eyebrow again. 

After a moment, he dropped Clint’s foot and his expression cleared.

He pulled out the knife he had held at Clint’s throat, and Clint- 

Clint couldn’t help it. He licked his lips.

Barnes tracked the movement but said nothing for an impossibly long, tense moment.

“I can dream, can’t I?” Barnes said, lips twisted.

He flipped the knife towards Clint, who tensed - there was a  _ knife _ flying through the air at him - but the blade landed cold and heavy and flat on Clint’s stomach.

When he was able to look away from it and back up, Barnes was gone.

-o-

“This,” Sam said, “is the shit I’m talking about. This is  _ exactly _ the shit I’m talking about when I say the guy is dangerous.”

Tony rolled his eyes.

“The Winter Soldier? Dangerous? Who would have guessed!”

The two men glared at each other. They glared at each other almost as much as  _ Steve _ and Tony glared at each other.

“But he didn’t hurt Clint,” Steve insisted, eyes bright and hopeful in a way that made Clint want to squirm in his seat and be anywhere but the focus of that expression.

“He left Clint to die,” Tony pointed out.

Now it was Clint who rolled his eyes.

“Dude. It took me maybe five minutes to get out of the ropes. I wasn’t going to  _ die _ .”

His ‘debriefing’, if sitting in Tony’s living room and drinking beer and eating chips and salsa could be called such a thing, was going about as well as expected. Steve had latched onto any news of ‘Bucky’ like it was a revelation from god, and the rest of the team remained skeptical. For Clint’s part, he had claimed the couch for himself and was three beers in and really, really didn’t care.

Just more shit to pile into the dumpster fire that was his life.

“You said none of the computers were salvageable?” Bruce finally spoke up.

“None,” Clint confirmed. “I even went back after our little thing to try again.”

Bruce looked thoughtful, but Clint wasn’t entirely sure why. After all, why  _ wouldn’t _ Barnes trash the computers after he got what he was after?

“He’s protecting himself,” Steve said, and he sounded  _ proud _ . So proud that Clint wanted to hit him.

But Bruce just nodded in agreement, the two men sharing a look that clearly meant something to them but that left the rest of the room frowning at them.

“And he took your boots off,” Natasha spoke up for the first time in what felt like forever.

“Uh, yeah?”

“Weapons search?” Sam hazarded.

Natasha shrugged one slim shoulder.

“He wouldn’t need to take them off for that. It isn’t like Clint keeps more than an ankle sheath down there.”

“Two,” Clint corrected, because he’d started strapping them on to both ankles instead of just his right.

Natasha nodded in easy agreement.

“We have to find him,” Steve announced.

“For the love of apple pie,” Tony grumbled. “He told Clint to  _ tell you to stop looking for him _ .”

“He would say that!” Steve insisted.

“He  _ did _ say that,” Sam said.

“Because he  _ cares _ ,” Steve said, and then looked at all of them in turn, eyes a little wild. “Don’t you get it? He  _ cares _ . He’s breaking through whatever HYDRA did to him, and he-”

“And he wants to be left alone,” Bruce interjected. “He was HYDRA’s puppet for seventy years, Steve. Now he’s asking for one thing.”

That had Steve finally shutting up, jaw locking and eyes going cold and narrow and stubborn.

“I should have looked for him when he fell,” Steve bit out. “It’s my fault they had him in the first place. I can’t change that - but I’m sure as hell not making the same mistake again.”

-o-

It was, mostly, an accident.

Clint was saddled with data-mining - something that he had apparently stupidly assumed J.A.R.V.I.S. would do for them - and he noticed money that shouldn’t be where it was. So he ditched the computer and followed the trail and- 

And found himself yet again slammed against a wall in the hallway of a fucked-up little office building with dead bodies strewn on the floor.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said.

Barnes was, thankfully, not in his golfer-accountant clothing, but instead in black tactical gear. Clint wasn’t sure  _ why, _ but that just… felt better. He still had his hair tied back, but Clint had to assume that was less part of the sweater vest look and more practicality. He also had a few days worth of dark stubble on his jaw, and it… was not a bad look on him. Not at all.

Barnes studied Clint’s face, and the knife at his throat dug in just a little deeper. Clint could feel it as he sucked in a breath.

“Steve is still looking for me,” Barnes growled. 

“He’s a stubborn asshole,” Clint pointed out.

Barnes scowled, but he didn’t contradict Clint - further proof, in Clint’s mind, that the man knew what was up. 

Clint tried to shift away from the light switch digging into his back, and Barnes immediately used his left hand to shove Clint back against the wall. He kept the hand in place, firm and cold and heavy against Clint’s belly.

Clint maybe made a sound at that. Maybe something that was similar to a whimper. 

Barnes’s eyes were impossible to look away from.

“What’s your safeword?”

Clint stared, sure he hadn’t heard Barnes correctly,  _ sure _ he was hallucinating. 

Barnes stared back, and his left thumb swept an arc across Clint’s shirt, digging in a little, and came to rest just under the waistband of Clint’s pants.

For a moment - hell, for an  _ eternity _ \- Clint forgot how to breathe.

“Winnebego,” he managed, through some superhuman feat, to whisper.

Barnes kept the knife at Clint’s throat, but he moved his left hand lower, holding Clint’s gaze all the while.

He thumbed open Clint’s pants and unzipped the fly, and yanked them down in a forceful motion that had Clint making that damn sound again.

The metal of his hand was cold and solid, and no fucking way it should feel that good against Clint’s bare thighs, but it did.

Barnes leaned in close, yanked one of Clint’s thighs up and pinned it in place with his own hip, and then he pulled Clint’s half-hard dick out of his briefs and Clint really, really and truly, could have died in that moment.

“I could kill you,” Barnes reminded Clint.

“Uh huh.” Clint sounded breathless and fucked-out to his  _ own _ fucked-up ears. He could only imagine how he sounded to Barnes.

He finally had to close his eyes when Barnes curled his fingers into a fist around Clint’s dick and squeezed lightly,  _ carefully _ .

Then Barnes started to fuck Clint’s dick with his fist, grip tight and cold and so impossibly good, and Clint simultaneously wanted to crawl out of his own body and live in this moment forever, because holy  _ fuck _ .

Barnes rubbed his thumb over the head of Clint’s dick, smearing precum and making Clint whimper again and clutch at him.

That had Barnes freezing. Clint too.

Somehow, they’d both forgotten that Clint had two hands of his own. Hands currently gripping Barnes like he was the only thing keeping Clint from dissolving into nothingness.

Clint blinked his eyes open, and he and Barnes had something like a staring contest.

“Please,” Clint begged. He wasn’t above begging. If he’d learned anything from those fucking therapy sessions during his ‘recovery’ post-Loki, it was that he wasn’t above  _ anything _ .

Barnes flicked Clint’s dick with his thumb, and Clint whimpered  _ again, _ and fucking hell that was embarrassing, but did it really matter? When Barnes was back to fucking him with sure, firm strokes and Clint was left balancing between the cold reality of Barnes’s hand and the growing coil of heat in his own belly?

Hell, did  _ anything _ matter other than keeping Barnes pulled tight against him and letting that fire grow and spread and - maybe, if he was very, very lucky - consume him?

Clint came with a gasp, but Barnes kept working his dick, not slowing down at all as Clint’s come streaked across his black shirt. He just kept Clint pinned in place with his eyes and his body and his knife, and Clint took it. 

He didn’t even try to fight it, didn’t pull away when the pleasure his orgasm had him floating on turned into something sharper, something that dragged him down.

Clint was holding on to Barnes so tightly it had to be painful - or at least uncomfortable. But when Clint came again, clawing at Barnes’s shoulders and  _ sobbing _ , Barnes just held him. Just kept staring at Clint with his implacable gaze.

It took way too long for Clint to remember how to breathe, and by that time, Barnes had pulled his pants back up and tucked his dick away.

“Fuck,” Clint sighed, and relaxed his death grip on Barnes.

Barnes finally pulled the knife away, and Clint - just how fucked-up  _ was he _ ? - actually missed the sharp weight of it.

He swallowed a few times, testing. Nope. Didn’t like it at all. 

“Tell Steve to stop looking for me,” Barnes said. As much of a mantra as Steve’s ‘I have to find him.’

  
  


He liked it even less when Barnes stepped back, turned on his heel, and walked away.

-o-

If Clint started  _ looking _ for Barnes after that, well… no one else needed to know. Especially not Steve, who was always so damn  _ happy _ to hear that Clint had run into Barnes yet again, and to hear Barnes’s repeated words - “tell Steve to stop looking for me”, as if they meant  _ anything else _ .

Maybe it was just pure  _ coincidence _ that Clint’s solo missions put him on the same path as Barnes. The fact that Natasha never reported running into Barnes on  _ her _ solo ops didn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t, but Clint was fairly certain that even she would break when faced with Steve’s eternal optimism and his  _ need _ for news of Barnes.

Coincidence or not, Clint encountered Barnes six more times over the next four months. It wasn’t  _ every _ mission - it wasn’t even half of them. Clint had two full-team base assaults and another eight solo missions in that same time that had no hint of Barnes, and instead left Clint washing blood from his hands and glaring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and dreaming of awful, all-consuming blue light.

But those six times? Clint didn’t have nightmares after those. Didn’t have to wash blood off or patch himself up because Barnes had already killed everyone, and all Clint had to do was try not to come too fast when Barnes started to touch him.

Well, five times were like that.

The sixth time… that went a little differently.

Barnes still shoved him against a wall, still held a knife to his throat, and it was damn near humiliating how  _ relieved _ Clint was to feel that knife and look into Barnes’s eyes.

But, unlike the other times, Barnes didn’t ask for his safeword, didn’t work his hand down Clint’s chest and thumb at his fly.

Instead, Barnes put a dark bag over Clint’s head and zip-tied his wrists together, and dragged him into a car and drove.

Clint tried to keep track of the turns - he was still, sort of, a professional.

Time passed. A lot of time. Hours.

And then Barnes was hauling him out of the car and through a musty-smelling place and up some stairs, and then more stairs and into somewhere that smelled like it had been doused with bleach sometime recently, and then-

Barnes pulled off the hood but kept the zip-tie on Clint’s wrists. They both knew the zip-tie would, at best, slow Clint down a few seconds. 

Clint blinked his eyes and adjusted to the low light around him after so long with no light.

“Bathroom’s through there,” Barnes pointed.

Clint took him up on the oblique offer and emptied his bladder. 

It wasn’t until he was fumbling with his zipper  _ after _ that he realized Barnes hadn’t searched him. Hadn’t taken any of his weapons or his  _ phone _ .

Clint hated that Barnes had done this to him, that he had given him the damn option of doing - what, the right thing? Was calling Steve the right thing? The one thing Barnes always said, always  _ requested _ , was that Clint tell Steve to stop looking for him.

“You fucking idiot,” Clint reprimanded his reflection.

But he didn’t reach for his phone.

Instead, he washed his hands and rubbed them dry on his clothes and went back out to find Barnes.

Barnes was in the bedroom, shirtless and shoeless, and Clint- Clint maybe had to bite down a hysterical laugh at that. 

The laugh died in his throat, though, when he let himself actually  _ look _ at Barnes. At his bare chest and the scars around his left shoulder and the scars  _ everywhere, _ and the dark hair that trailed down into his black pants and the steady rise and fall of his chest and-

“On the bed,” Barnes instructed.

If Clint was quick to obey, it was just… manners.

If Clint stretched his still-bound hands over his head towards the metal headboard, that was just… remembering the last time Barnes had had Clint in a bed.

Barnes looked at him, pale gaze tracking the length of Clint’s body, from his boots to his fingers.

Hastily, Clint tried to toe off his boots.

Barnes smirked. Actually smirked, and moved over to ease the boots - and the ankle sheaths - from Clint’s feet. 

He dropped them to the floor, and then climbed onto the bed with Clint. His thick thighs straddled Clint’s waist, and Clint… Clint whimpered. Again.

“Safeword?” Barnes asked. The start of these things everytime.

“Winnebago,” Clint dutifully repeated.

Barnes cut Clint’s wrists free and, before Clint could be too disappointed, tied each of his hands to the headboard, just like he had that first time.

It put Barnes in a new position for Clint, put Barnes’s chest - his bare chest - near Clint’s mouth and his nose, and Clint was only human. He drew in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of Barnes - gunpowder and blood and sweat and something else that was warmer, subtler. 

Barnes sat back on his heels and surveyed his handiwork for a moment. Clint forcefully reminded himself that he had to  _ breathe _ .

Ironic, considering that the first move Barnes made was to lift his hand - his right hand - to Clint’s face. For one wild second, Clint thought Barnes was going to caress him or something.

Instead, Barnes settled his hand over Clint’s mouth, adjusted his fingers, and managed to cover both Clint’s mouth and nose.

Clint moaned in relief and, sure, arousal. Always that. Hell, always both.

Barnes wasn’t smirking any longer. He held himself still, held his hand over Clint’s face, and he looked at Clint as if he could see through all of his layers of bullshit.

Clint’s entire body felt like a livewire, every nerve thrumming with possibility, his lungs tight and desperate and  _ empty _ .

Instead of lifting his hand away, Barnes eased it down to cup Clint’s jaw as Clint sucked in deep, greedy breaths and stared back at Barnes and tried to figure out- Hell, he wasn’t even sure. There was so much he didn’t know, didn’t understand, didn’t  _ want _ to. If Barnes wanted to do this to him, wasn’t that all that mattered, really?

“Good,” Barnes said, voice a low rumble that went straight to Clint’s dick even as that one word lit up Clint’s brain in ways he didn’t think were even still possible, not since Loki had worked him over, and Clint melted, just damn melted.

Barnes’s hand drifted, thumb moving over Clint’s throat in something that damn sure felt like a caress, and then his hand was lower, smoothing over Clint’s shirt and his chest and coming to a stop on Clint’s belly.

“How do you feel about suckjobs?” Barnes asked.

Clint licked his lips, not even intentionally.

“I fucking love them,” he answered promptly. One corner of Barnes’s full lips ticked upwards, and Clint made himself a promise to make  _ that _ happen again. “You, uh,” Clint had to very forcefully tell himself to calm down before he continued, “you can fuck my mouth as hard as you want.” By which he meant - and hoped Barnes would just  _ know _ \- that he wanted to choke on Barnes’s dick.

Barnes’s mouth flattened immediately.

“No,” he said.

“No?” Clint echoed. Shit. He’d made it weird. Made it bad. And now Barnes was going to walk away and this thing - this one damn good thing - was going to end and Clint was going to-

“Not me. You.”

“Oh.  _ Oh _ . Uh, sure. Yeah. Whatever you want. I- Yes. Yes, please.” Clint was aware that he was babbling, aware that he sounded like a fucking moron, but Barnes wasn’t leaving and that was the important thing.

That tilted curve was back, and Clint congratulated himself. Silently, because he was an idiot but he wasn’t an  _ idiot _ .

Barnes shifted, scooting further down the bed and drawing Clint’s legs out from under his. Slowly, as if it mattered, as if Clint mattered, Barnes unfastened Clint’s pants and removed them, hands spanning Clint’s bare thighs and sliding over Clint’s too-sensitive skin. And then Barnes was pulling off Clint’s briefs and Clint was naked from the waist down, dick hard and heavy and unsteady breathing making his entire body shiver under Barnes’s sharp gaze. 

He stared long enough for Clint to start to feel self-conscious, to feel all of the familiar fears work their way to the surface and-

“Thank you,” Barnes murmured, voice so low Clint almost missed it. He sounded so damn sincere, sounded like he was being given a gift or something, that Clint had to close his eyes.

Of course, a moment later, his eyes were snapping open and he was damn near  _ wailing _ because Barnes- Barnes did not tease when it came to sucking dick. One minute, Clint was lying there, and the next, Barnes had Clint’s entire dick in his mouth, lips pressed to Clint’s groin and Clint’s dick surrounded by tight, hot, wet heat, and holy  _ fuck _ .

Looking down at Barnes felt obscene, his lips dark and stretched over the width of Clint’s dick, his blue eyes dark with lust and his cheeks full, and Clint was never, ever going to forget this. Ever.

Barnes slowly pulled off, teeth scraping just the slightest bit and tongue teasing, and Clint was left shivering and arching his hips up to chase Barnes’s mouth.

“Been a while since I’ve done this,” Barnes said, voice already rough since he’d just  _ inhaled _ Clint’s dick.

Clint had to clear his throat and start over a few times before he finally managed to speak.

“You’re doing great,” he finally settled on. 

Barnes gave Clint another of those lopsided smirks.

And then he dipped his head back down and licked Clint root to tip, tongue lapping up pearls of precome. Barnes had to move his hands to Clint’s hips and hold him down, and Clint felt a little bad about that.  _ He _ liked his face fucked just fine, but he knew most people didn’t, and he thought it was bad manners to just go for it without asking.

But Barnes’s mouth felt like an actual kind of heaven Clint had never even suspected could exist and his body refused to care about ‘manners.’

“Harder,” Clint begged. “Please - hands. Harder.”

Barnes  _ smirked _ around Clint’s dick, and Clint- Clint maybe had a lot of thoughts and feelings about that. But they were pushed aside when Barnes dug his fingers into Clint’s hips hard enough to bruise, and it was  _ perfect _ .

As far as the actual dick-sucking went - it was like Barnes was determined to take Clint apart by overwhelming him with sensation, and instead of choking Clint, he was working him to breathlessness another way, and Clint had no complaints at all. 

Not until he was so close to coming his thighs were trembling and Barnes pulled off his dick with a wet, filthy sound.

Clint cried out in protest before he could stop himself.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Barnes said, shifting over Clint to get one hand - the metal hand - back on Clint’s dick and the other hand over Clint’s mouth.

Clint whimpered in relief because  _ fuck yes _ . Coming like this, dick still wet from Barnes’s incredible mouth, that deadly hand working him to pleasure and that  _ other _ deadly hand stealing away Clint’s breath - fuck yes.

Barnes managed to draw it out, until Clint’s vision was spotty and his lungs were burning, and when he finally came it felt like his orgasm was drawn from his very bones it was so intense and startling and all-consuming.

It left Clint floating, his body simultaneously heavy and light, his brain blissfully blank.

But then Barnes started to lick up Clint’s come and his stubbled jaw tickled Clint’s belly. 

Barnes’s eyes went round at the sound Clint made.

“That didn’t happen,” Clint insisted.

Barnes made it happen again. And again.

Clint tried to twist away, tugged at the ropes holding him in place, tried to draw his knees up,  _ anything _ to protect himself, but Barnes just held him down like it was no effort and  _ tortured _ Clint until he was breathless and crying.

Barnes kissed away his tears, and that brought them both crashing back to Earth.

They stared at each other for a long moment, Clint still struggling to breathe, Barnes suddenly serious and withdrawn.

Mouth in a flat line, Barnes pulled a knife from his pants and used it to cut Clint’s hands free. He turned away, gave Clint his back while Clint untied the knots and rubbed circulation back.

“I need you to give something to Stark,” Barnes said, serious and cold.

“What?” Clint had heard him, but it was… difficult to immediately process the jump that had just happened.

Barnes reached into his pants again, this time pulling out a sleek metal thumb drive that wasn’t dissimilar to his arm.

“Give this to Stark.” Barnes pressed the drive into Clint’s hand, curled his fingers around it. “Tell him… tell him whatever he wants - I won’t fight him. I’m waiting for him. Here.”

Despite his words, Barnes got up from the bed, picked up his boots and abandoned shirt, and walked out of the room. 

Still more than a little out of it, Clint stayed in the bed. Even after he heard a door open and close. Even after he was positive Barnes was gone.

-o-

Tony refused to speak to any of them for a solid week after Clint gave him the thumb drive.

Because Clint was a) a spy, b) curious as fuck, c) paranoid as hell, and d) a  _ spy _ , he opened the thumb drive and investigated the contents himself on a burner computer before passing it on to Tony.

There were instructions - a document helpfully titled ‘Read Me First’ that told Tony to watch the video file labeled ‘1991’ before he tackled the data files. 

So Clint dutifully watched the ‘1991’ video first and promptly broke out in a cold sweat and went through an entire bottle of shitty tequila as he debated whether or not to give Tony evidence that Barnes had murdered his parents.

And then he made himself look over the data files. Or, at least, he  _ started _ to look over the data files. And then he realized that the files contained  _ everything _ . 

Everything, as in every tendril of HYDRA from World War II to future plans - all of the information that Barnes had systematically been erasing from every base  _ he _ got to first. Everything they needed to make sure HYDRA was scoured from civilization. 

Everything about the twice-captured, twice-tortured, twice-experimented on Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. That was buried in the other data files, not even clearly labeled, and Clint was pretty damn sure Barnes wouldn’t have included it at all except that the man was god damn thorough.

Fairly confident he would regret it, Clint did give Tony the thumb drive.

After the week of tense, angry silence - after the week of all of them avoiding Tony’s lab and the sounds of destruction and eardrum-exploding levels of classic rock - Tony called a team meeting.

He looked like shit, immaculate facial hair unkempt and growing in stubbly, eyes bloodshot and hollow, clothes a wrinkled mess.

“Operation ’Save Barnes’ is over,” he said without preamble, shaky voice and shakier eyes focused on Steve.

Steve immediately opened his mouth to argue, but Sam’s hand on his arm kept him from actually speaking. 

Neat trick.

Tony sucked in a shallow breath, and Clint… Clint rarely wanted to offer physical affection to people, but he sure as hell wanted to hug Tony. That Tony would punch him and probably not  _ stop _ punching him if Clint did hug him… well, that almost made him want to hug Tony even more.

“I’ll be back in a month. Six weeks, tops,” Tony continued. “If I die, Jarvis will let you know.”

And just like that, Tony Stark walked away and left the Avengers wondering what the fuck was going on. 

Even Clint, who knew what Tony had been given, wondered what the fuck was going on.

  
  


-o-

What  _ went on _ was five weeks of surgically precise, brutal strikes against facilities, organizations, and individuals all over the world. Assassinations. Hostile corporate takeovers. Fires and building collapses. Sudden and devastating military coups.

Steve (and therefore Sam) trailed after the hits, taking off to investigate the ruins and piece together the what and the why with the intel that Natasha and Jarvis had managed to assemble.

Someone - or, Clint fervently hoped, two someones - were eradicating HYDRA. Eviscerating the Nazis from public and private life. No one was safe - not the school teacher in Texas who had a hard-drive full of HYDRA propaganda and taught his students that HYDRA was misunderstood. Not the senator from Idaho or the president of Albania. 

Natasha turned a wall of Clint’s Bed-Stuy apartment into a serial killer collage, printouts of data and photos of the dead covering a frankly astounding amount of space. Clint wasn’t an idiot, and neither was Natasha.

She did it at his place because she didn’t want Jarvis seeing it, or Steve or Sam. And because she was trying to bait Clint into revealing the ‘more’ that he knew and wasn’t telling her.

Clint wasn’t an idiot, but he was an asshole. The kind of asshole who watched his best friend - the woman whose life he had saved countless times and who had saved his even more - struggle to piece together an infinitely complicated puzzle and didn’t do anything more than drink coffee and eat cereal or pizza while she worked.

It wasn’t… it wasn’t  _ just _ because Clint had this unnameable tangle of something for Barnes that kept his mouth shut. That was, sure, a large part of it.

But it was also the fact that Clint was tired. So damn tired. And the wall of the damned was only making him  _ more _ tired. Because it just didn’t  _ stop _ . It didn’t  _ end _ . 

HYDRA had worked its way into  _ every damn thing _ . 

And what - what exactly had Clint and Natasha spent half their lives doing? Because, as it turned out, they had spent half their damn lives working  _ for _ HYDRA.

Natasha finally took the coffee mug out of Clint’s hands and drained it in one scalding gulp and asked the question Clint’s brain had been shouting for more than a year now.

“We’re on the list too, right?” Natasha didn’t sound sad or angry or… anything. She was just asking a question to confirm a data point. Just getting intel. Not talking about their scheduled demise.

“Gotta be,” Clint tried to sound as neutral as she did and knew he failed spectacularly when she grabbed his hand.

-o-

And then, one bright, hellishly hot day in August, Tony came back to the Tower. 

With Barnes.

-o-o-o-

  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Clint managed to avoid Barnes for three weeks.

All things considered, it was kind of impressive he’d managed more than three  _ days _ what with the way the shit hit the fan and the Tower became a minefield. 

A minefield of Steve all heart-eyed and hopeful and  _ sad _ because Barnes was right  _ there  _ but he wasn’t Bucky and showed about zero inclination to live up to the memories Steve had been hoarding of his old pal. 

A minefield of Tony and Bruce in full geek mode because - and the history books and documentaries and shitty feature film from the 70s and really great porn from the late 90s had  _ not _ hinted at this at all - Barnes was as much of a nerd as those two. The three of them  _ scienced _ together. Everywhere - Tony’s lab, Bruce’s lab, the common room, the kitchen. Everywhere.

A minefield of Sam and Natasha both independently stalking Barnes. Sam, probably, because of his whole Steve thing. And Natasha… Clint could think of a good three hundred reasons why Natasha might be stalking Barnes. And none of those even involved  _ Clint _ . 

So, all told, Clint avoiding all of them and avoiding Barnes on top of that - it was exhausting. So exhausting that, after two weeks of it, he packed his duffle and moved back to his Bed-Stuy apartment. 

That only Natasha appeared to notice his absence - showing up on his doorstep with beer and pizza that same night - well… that was a thing Clint more or less knew would happen. Had been counting on, actually. So it shouldn’t hurt nearly as much as it did. 

Ten days after leaving the minefield behind, Clint was getting his hair cut at the corner barber shop a few blocks from his apartment and contemplating which box of cereal he would finish off for dinner that night.

He was, therefore, completely oblivious to another customer being sat in the chair beside him. 

Until Bill, Clint’s barber, nudged his head forward so he could shave the back of his neck and Clint - 

Clint caught sight of a familiar profile.

He jerked back so quickly and so violently that Bill’s clippers actually cut his neck.

As Bill cursed and scrambled for a towel, Clint just stared.

Barnes was sitting beside him.

Barnes was getting a haircut.

And not just a trim.

Even as Clint sat there bleeding, Barnes’s barber lifted his shears and took off at least six inches of Barnes’s hair.

Bill pressed a hot towel to Clint’s neck and Clint just barely swallowed the desire to tell Bill that was only going to make him bleed more. The cut wasn’t that deep, after all, and, well… Barnes was right there staring at Clint in the mirror and his eyes were so damn blue.

But Barnes didn’t say anything, and after Bill got over himself - and Clint apologized - the man went back to cutting Clint’s hair.

In almost no time, Clint was being led to the register and digging out his wallet. Barnes, meanwhile, was sporting three-ish inches of wild looking hair and his barber had just whipped out a pair of clippers.

Clint found himself frozen in place, unable to turn around and walk away, unwilling to move closer.

So he lingered, looking like a crazy person - the Hello, Kitty! Bandaids on the back of his neck couldn’t be helping, but Bill’s kid had a thing for the cat and that was, apparently, what he had on hand.

And Barnes…

God  _ damn _ did Barnes look good. He had a bit of stubble on his jaw - Clint had noticed, before he ran away, that Barnes tended to go a few days between shaves - and with his hair short and shaped he was… fuck, he was hot.

He very clearly wasn’t the Bucky Barnes who had fallen in 1945. He also very clearly wasn’t the Winter Soldier. He was someone else now, someone who looked not quite at ease in his own body, but a hell of a long way from a programmed near-robotic assassin. 

Hell. He was someone Clint  _ wanted _ . And while Clint wanted a lot of things, he wasn’t used to getting them, and he was even less used to wanting to fight for what he wanted. Especially not since he’d lost track of what he wanted and what  _ Loki _ had wanted.

But Barnes? Barnes wasn’t tainted by Loki, couldn’t be and wouldn’t be and Clint… Clint really fucking wanted him.

Eventually, the barber finished with Barnes and the other man rose to his feet and ran his right hand through his hair, tousling the short strands and checking out his own reflection in the mirror before he smirked and nodded.

And then he looked over to Clint and that damn smirk only grew.

Clint fought against the urge to run while Barnes paid - after all, Barnes had tracked him down once, he would do it again. Or, well, maybe he wouldn’t… and that was not a thing Clint wanted to contemplate.

“Dinner?” Barnes asked while slipping his wallet back into the back pocket of his rather form fitting black jeans.

Clint dragged his gaze away from Barnes’s ass and up to his face again.

“What?”

Still smirking, Barnes opened the door to the barber shop.

“I’ll buy you dinner.”

And it wasn’t - 

There was no way Barnes was referencing Clint’s throwaway comment, his useless babbling, from their first meeting. 

“What are you doing?” Clint asked. 

He did, of course, follow Barnes out of the barber shop. And he did, of course, step close to the building and out of pedestrian traffic. And he did, of course, totally not at all hope that Barnes would press against him and hold him in place. 

So he wasn’t even a little disappointed when Barnes moved to stand beside him, shoulders pressed together, leaving Clint free to walk away.

“Failing to flirt with you,” Barnes said, words not quite a drawl.

Clint stared at him.

“Dude, you’ve had my dick in your mouth. Why are you flirting with me?”

Barnes raised both eyebrows and stared back at Clint like he thought the answer to that was obvious.

It wasn’t.

“Because I’d like to have your dick in my mouth again?” Barnes suggested.

“ _ Why _ ? You’re - you’re safe now. You and Tony kicked all of the ass and you’re…” Clint gestured at him. “You can have any dick you want.”

Barnes’s lips twitched.

“Even yours?”

Clint rolled his eyes.

“You don’t need to waste time with me, okay? I - look, I appreciate it. Appreciated it. It was good - hell of a lot better than getting my ass kicked and indescribably better than having to kill anyone. But I -  _ you _ \- you get to do better, man. You get to be with someone  _ good _ .”

“Huh.” Barnes no longer looked amused, but he also wasn’t walking away, so maybe he hadn’t understood Clint’s rambling.

“Just - go flirt with someone worth your time, okay?”

“Steve said you’d be like this.”

“I - what?”

Barnes arched one eyebrow and shifted, not quite pushing Clint against the wall with his body but definitely crowding him a little. Clint swallowed and reminded himself that he needed to breathe.

“Natasha said you would just keep running, but Steve said you would try to convince me you weren’t good enough.”

“I -” Clint shut his mouth. There was no way he could respond to that. Neither of them were wrong, clearly, but also -  _ when _ had this conversation about him gone down? When had Steve and Natasha and  _ Barnes _ sat around talking about  _ Clint _ ?

“I’m not good enough,” Clint finally forced himself to say. It was, after all, the truth.

“I don’t get to make my own decisions?” Barnes’s voice sounded idle but Clint knew him, realized he  _ knew _ that tone even after only being around Barnes for a handful of sexual encounters and maybe stalking him while also avoiding him at the Tower. That was the tone of voice Barnes used when he was on the verge of being pissed, of going cold and still.

Clint sighed.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” He asked.

Barnes’s expression grew pinched.

“Of course you do. You - I don’t want to force you into anything. Ever. That’s not -”

“You didn’t,” Clint jumped in, because that was not where he’d thought Barnes would take this and that was not something he wanted Barnes to ever question. “I wanted it.”

“But not anymore?” Barnes hadn’t moved any closer, but suddenly it felt like he had, felt like Clint was trapped and as much as Clint actively sought out that feeling, right now it sent a jolt of anxiety through him.

“What do you even want from me? You really just want to jerk me off once a week and then go back to being brilliant with Tony and Bruce? There’s - you deserve more than that.”

“I want more than that,” Barnes confirmed. “I want more than that with you.”

Clint opened his mouth, tried to think of another protest, tried to think of anything he could say that would convince Barnes to leave now before Clint could get even more attached, before Clint needed him even more.

“What’s your safeword?” Barnes asked.

Clint stared at him, shocked. They were in public - not even in a dark alley, but standing on a busy street in the early evening and there were people  _ everywhere _ .

He licked his lips.

“Winnebago.”

Barnes stepped closer, eliminating all space between them, sandwiching Clint between the hard wall at his back and the hard wall of muscle that was Barnes’s chest and thighs.

Barnes kissed him.

Soft and slow, lips teasing over Clint’s, tongue teasing at the seam of his mouth until Clint gave in and let Barnes taste him and fucking  _ hell _ . Clint’s knees felt weak. The kind of weak that usually meant extreme blood loss or a hell of a lot of tequila.

Barnes eased away, gave Clint space and the chance to run.

Clint grabbed his shirt and yanked him back into place.

There was nothing soft about their second kiss.

-o-

  
  



End file.
